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Supply Teaching and Technology

Siobhan is an primary teacher from Sydney who decided to move to the UK after university to teach in schools in London through Protocol Education.

Today she talks about her aversion to the techno side of teaching! I'm sure at least a few of us can relate...

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that technology is not my strong point. They might even go further than that and suggest I have an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that repels it (as one helpful lecturer at university did). It seems that no matter what side of the world I happen to be on, this may in fact be the case.

My old laptop served me through university, however, not without problems. Starting afresh in a new country (in a new continent) I thought an upgrade would help me greatly. What I did not count on, however, was my brand new 2 month old laptop chucking a hissy fit and refusing to turn on. Obviously, given my past, I had expected to endure some difficulty from the machine at some point but I have to confess I was kind of hoping that is would be similar to the water draining in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps it was too far a stretch to hope that gravitational forces would turn my EMP into a force of good.

The biggest trouble with repelling technology is that in every classroom in England there is an interactive white board, also known as a smartboard. I am convinced that the only reason it passes for "smart" is because it makes everyone trying to use it look dumb. Nothing quite parallels the spread of panic that you get when you are standing in front of a class of students, all looking at you, wondering why you can't get the simple program to work. Given that percussive maintenance (the art of banging something until it works again) and swearing at it are out of the question, I am forced to negotiate with the 'smartboard' with an audience to my failure.

In the same week that my laptop died, I had to give up on 2 different lessons due to an inability to work the smartboard and needed the IT guy to be called to install a program that 'should already have been on there, not sure what happened to it'. There comes a point when I cannot help but wonder if the university lecturer was right.

After making an international phone call to a techwiz who has never yet failed me, I heard the words 'thats a nice door stop you've got there'. So now begins the hassle with international warranties and figuring out what is and isn't covered. And the most ironic part is that all IT companies communicate through email and Skype!!

Hopefully the computer will be back up and running soon, and I should be able to update the blog more regularly, with less rants about the evils of technology and more stories from the frontline...ah, I mean the classroom.